Google To Invest $2.5 Billion In U.S. Offices And Data Centers

Google has disclosed that it will be undertaking an expansion in the United States by putting up new offices as well as data centers across 14 states. Approximately $2.5 billion will be spent by Google in the expansion plans resulting in thousands of jobs being created. This was revealed by the chief executive officer of Google, Sundar Pichai, during a ground-breaking ceremony of the online search giant’s new data center in the state of Tennessee.

“The launch of Google’s data centre in Clarksville is great news for Montgomery County. These high-quality jobs will benefit families in a real way, and I applaud Google’s mission to improve education and advance workforce development for Americans,” Bob Corker, the Tennessee Senator, said.

New or expanded offices

Besides Tennessee other states the online search firm intends to expand its data center facilities in include Oklahoma, Virginia, Oregon and Alabama. In the data centers a total of about 1,900 job positions will be created in various departments ranging from sales to engineering. According to Pichai the investments in expanded or new offices will be made in the states of Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, Colorado and California.

This comes in the wake of Google researchers using algorithms to predict stroke or heart attack risk in human beings by scanning the human eye. According to Nature Biomedical Engineering, a science journal, the algorithms did not however outperform the medical approaches that are currently used including blood tests. Though the algorithms need more validation and more tests, the approach could one day be used by individuals to easily test or screen themselves without having to see a doctor using a cheap and quick method that is non-invasive. Currently the heart diseases are the No. 1 cause of death across the globe.

Pattern-recognizing algorithms

In their research work the Google scientists fed images of eye retinas to pattern-recognizing algorithms in order to train them on signs of long-term health dangers. The initiative was conducted by Google scientists in collaboration with Verily Life Sciences, an Alphabet subsidiary.

Heart diseases are not the only conditions that can be detected by just looking at the retina. Conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes also change the retina. Two years ago for instance researchers at Google used algorithms to test for diabetic retinopathy which is an eye disease that can lead to blindness. However the algorithms of Google were not perfect and had an accuracy rate of 70%.